writerish person and beautiful weirdo

stupid pining alpha sheriffs and the confused little wolves who love them

Hey, everyone who hasn't yet seen my nerdy posts on Tumblr or Facebook, guess what? I've got a release date for Little Wolf. It's due out May 8.

Then at the end of this month I started editing Kazimir. Well, the collection of shorts, tentatively titled, The Firebird and Other Stories. (Also, hopefully, starting Tulip shortly before then. Oh Tulip. He has *presence*. Other fairies look out!)

Little Wolf (Nathaniel moons. Tim looks like a pissy, half-starved little thing, which is exactly what he is, really.)

Anyway, just a quick update. (And oh yes. I moved. Now it's the recovery. Sigh.) If you follow me on Tumblr, you got a cute, sort of porny, not really porny, kind of snippet with Will and Charlie the other day. Which is another reason to follow me there, if you needed one. I get why people don't. I mean, Tumblr is... Tumblr. But just putting it out there. Also if anyone ever wants to ask me anything, there are ways. Goodreads has a section (though my notifications only go through sometimes). There's my LJ. My Tumblr askbox. My Facebook. The link on the Dreamspinner author arcade. If you ever feel like contacting me, feel free, just keep in mind I am regular person with no secretary, so responses might take me a while, if I even see them. :):):)

More later. I am tired at the moment. Have an excerpt:

“He’s watching you, like everyone else here. You’re their fanta—” Tim started to say, but the sheriff abruptly broke eye contact, leaving Tim to flounder and deal with the feeling that he should do something to get the sheriff’s attention back.

Tim didn’t want his attention. Yet he was still talking. “Was the traffic accident bad? The one that made you late,” he explained in a rush. “Not that you have to come in here at the same time every day, or I was watching the window for a sign of you. I mean, on your days with later shifts, you eat at different times, so it isn’t a big deal. Carl said there was an accident on the highway, and I thought it must have been bad. I hope everyone was okay.”

Tim was pretty sure he sounded like an idiot. But before he could try to explain or use his big boy words, the sheriff answered.

“One person went to the hospital, but he isn’t critical. We arrested one of the drivers for suspicion of DUI. Everyone else was checked out and was fine.” The sheriff’s voice was level, but he was looking at Tim like he wanted to touch him again.

Tim ducked his head at the flare of heat he felt at that thought. “That’s good, then, no one really hurt,” he agreed, then brought his head back up. “Drunk in the middle of the day. Someone started early.” Maybe if it didn’t take so much alcohol for werewolves to get drunk, they would understand the inclination to drink like that.

The sheriff nodded. “It happened this morning, so someone started very early.”

“Tourists go crazy before they even get here,” Carl muttered. Tim ignored him, though he had a feeling Carl was right and Tim was going to start getting irked by out of control tourists soon too.

“Very early?” Tim pressed, not sure why. Maybe the phases of the moon were a werewolf’s alcohol. “You must be exhausted.”

“And starving.” The sheriff stretched and scratched his belly through his shirt. Tim spent a delirious moment imagining the man’s ab muscles and then another trying to guess what his claws would feel like. The sheriff didn’t seem to notice. “My lunch should be ready. Robin’s Egg should bring yours over soon.”

“I don’t need you to get me lunch.” Tim wasn’t going to forget a meal. But Sheriff Neri didn’t even acknowledge his protest, and it was no good bringing it up to Robin’s Egg. She’d call him a puppy.

“Tim.” The sheriff was staring at him with the unblinking, commanding gaze of a werewolf who had a pack the size of an entire town. Tim kind of forgot his own name for a second. “Tim.” The sheriff inhaled, then lowered his voice. “When the festival starts, it’s going to get crowded in town.”

“Yeah, yeah, people will be jumping you left and right,” Tim snarled softly and then flinched to realize, in addition to snarling, his eyes had narrowed. He hoped a bad mood and insane jealousy were indistinguishable to the sheriff’s nose. All Tim could detect in the air, aside from the brown gravy Cosmo put on almost everything, was the sheriff’s arousing scent and Tim’s own anxious sweat. “Just kidding, oh great and powerful sheriff,” Tim tried weakly. The sheriff let him panic while his gaze skipped over Tim’s face again, as if he was counting every nonintimidating freckle across Tim’s nose. Tim stared back until Carl cleared his throat.

The sheriff lifted his chin before changing the subject. “Once it’s crowded in town, I won’t be able to keep an eye on you. Not the way I’d like.”

“Oh.” Tim wasn’t sure what to say. He wasn’t going to ask for help, if that’s what the sheriff was after. It was amazing the man hadn’t ordered him to either get out of town or to stay under his protection, because he wasn’t going to get an invitation from Tim.

The sheriff waited, as if he expected Tim to argue or at least keep talking. When Tim didn’t say anything, the sheriff expelled a breath. “I’m letting you know that my offer stands.” He put a hand behind him, probably to preemptively shut Carl up.

“Live in your house?” Tim had to swallow to keep speaking. “Be in your house? With you?” He couldn’t help but sound horrified at the idea, of not only living with another were, but this one. “You offered that before.”

His first day here, after the sheriff sniffed and studied Tim in front of every single person in the café, he had asked about Ray Branigan and if Tim needed a place to stay. Tim had thought he’d been about to be mauled or mounted or some equally horrible fate that would have done Luca proud and had quickly shaken his head no. Then he’d gone back to gawking at the king werewolf in front of him.It had not been Tim’s proudest moment, not that the sheriff had seemed to notice. The sheriff had let out one disturbingly quiet, almost surprised growl and then asked if Robin’s Egg knew of any rooms in town available for Tim and if she’d hired anyone to work in the gift shop for the summer. Just like that, before Tim could explain that he wasn’t going to stay long, he’d had a place to live and a job.For a second Tim thought he heard that growl again, but the sheriff was only staring at him, the familiar frown darkening his expression.

Sheriff Neri didn’t respond to that pathetic attempt at manners, which probably meant the invitation was something to do with the town, or, of course, some damn instinct. After all, the sheriff had made the offer before, and there was another were already living in the sheriff’s house in the woods with him—because the town of Wolf’s Paw wasn’t just some touristy, werewolf-centered resort, it was also some kind of sanctuary for lost weres.

“Don’t worry about it,” the sheriff said, as if Tim had said something, when Tim was reasonably sure he hadn’t, not out loud anyway. As Tim was relearning, weres didn’t always use words to speak. Tim frowned into the sheriff’s lickable face and tried to silently communicate independence and confidence. The sheriff gave him another intent stare. If Tim didn’t know it was the sheriff of a goddamn town full of werewolves in front of him, he’d have said the man was hesitant. “Just be careful.”

Tim couldn’t decide what to call the flavor of the sheriff’s scent. He was debating between wood-burning pizza oven and the skin on the inside of his wrist after he jacked off, which was the closest thing to what sex tasted like that Tim knew, except for the taste of his own come, and that he knew because he was werewolf and the urge to lick wasn’t something he denied when he was alone. Things rarely tasted gross to a were’s tongue, but even so Tim had a feeling the taste of sex and come on Nathaniel’s skin would be divine.

He tried to stay focused on the conversation, but all he could seem to notice was how the sheriff’s chest moved as he breathed heavily in and out. “Me?” Tim remembered to speak again. “I have no need to be careful. First sign of anything and I’m out of this weird, flea-bitten, sex-obsessed town.”

“So you’ve said,” the sheriff remarked and stepped abruptly away, taking his face and his eyes and his mouth with him. Tim stopped imagining his tongue and his fingers and his dick in that mouth and tried to calm down by thinking of the things the sheriff would likely do to him if he tried anything, if the man didn’t die laughing first.

Nathaniel’s gaze swept the room until he found Tim. At the sight of him, Tim froze, more terrified than he had been a few minutes ago. It was as though his heart was seizing in his chest the way it did whenever he thought of Luca and how Luca had enjoyed showing Tim how strong he was. There was no telling what Luca would do in a town of potential challengers. There was no telling what Luca would do if he ever saw Nathaniel looking at Tim the way he was right now.Tim felt a growl slip out, and then Nathaniel was in front of him, moving too fast for Tim to have a chance to stumble backward over his own feet.“I hunted you down,” Tim wheezed at him, so shocked it was all he could say, which was fine because it was all his tight chest would let him say at first. “I’ve never done that. That’s good. I mean, no, it isn’t, unless… is it?” He had sought out safety, and his instinct had brought him to the sheriff. Staring up with wide eyes and failing to catch his breath seemed to be all he could do about it.He could tell the very second Nathaniel noticed his bags, because Nathaniel let out a sound that made the others around them stop.The sound wasn’t a word, at least not a human word, but Tim heard himself trying to answer it. “I have to go. They know I’m here, or that I was here. It’s why I have to… I have to go.” The stream of words was almost too fast for Tim to understand, and he was the one who said it, but he could hear the fear in his voice and the way he repeated himself, as if he was asking for something. “Nathaniel, I….” He couldn’t seem to shut up. “I have to go.”Tim barely had the realization that what he was really doing was asking Nathaniel to help him, and then Nathaniel spread his hand out on Tim’s shoulder, his fingertips at the collar of Tim’s shirt, close to his skin. Nathaniel’s hand was a steady, warm pressure until Tim swallowed and raised his head, and then Nathaniel stroked his thumb over Tim’s Adam’s apple before he exhaled and let Tim go.Nathaniel’s handsome, ridiculous face was locked into a frown, and he was looking at Tim as if he was afraid to blink. It was a ludicrous thought—Nathaniel being afraid of anything—but Tim stared back at him until his eyes burned.“I have to go.” It scraped out of Tim, making him notice how quiet they had both been, and wonder how long they’d been like that. “I didn’t have the money for my room this month yet, I mean, I will need it. But tell Mrs. Pinsky I will get it to her. And tell Carl, I really…. Anyway, I came here because… to thank you, I guess. You’ve been decent, considering how annoying I was.” Tim felt the heat from Nathaniel’s hand fading away and hurried on, because it sounded like he was saying good-bye and he didn’t actually know how to do that, or why he felt the need to try it now on someone who couldn’t possibly care. “Someone might come looking for me. So it’s better if I go.”“Do you want to go?” Nathaniel finally spoke. He stared at the room behind Tim. Tim turned to see why, then let out a breath when he realized Nathaniel was looking for threats, threats to Tim, probably so he could crush them.“Do I want to go?” Tim repeated, because that wasn’t a question he had ever heard. Not even Ray had ever asked him that.Nathaniel looked away from the imaginary predators before putting his hand back on Tim’s shoulder to drag him forward. Tim flailed and touched Nathaniel’s chest, then yanked his hands away with a hurried apology.Nathaniel stood straighter and enunciated every word. “Do you want to go?”Tim wet his lips and shook his head without thinking. Thinking, he decided faintly, was impossible when inches away from Nathaniel Neri and inhaling so much of him that he was dizzy with it.